An Idaho doctor testified in court this week against that state’s pro-life law, claiming doctors are too “scared and confused” to treat patients.
According to ABC News, Dr. Julie Lyons, a family physician in Idaho, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit over the state’s pro-life law. She told the court on Tuesday that a 14-week pregnant patient with “heavy bleeding” visited the emergency room four times in one week only to be repeatedly sent home. “This patient had developed a massive subchorionic hemorrhage — that’s where the placenta rips off the side of the uterus — and she had developed this earlier in the week, and had been into the emergency room several times,” Lyons claimed, adding that the patient had become “increasingly anemic.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a subchorionic hematoma is treated with preventative care aimed at preventing preterm delivery, miscarriage, and stillbirth, and includes a reduction in exercise and heavy lifting, avoiding sex, close monitoring with frequent ultrasounds, hospitalization, and complete bed rest. It is unclear if doctors advised the patient to take any such precautions during her pregnancy or after she presented to the ER for the first time. In addition, a study published by the NIH in 2023 regarding the treatment of subchorionic hemorrhage states:
Treatment and management should focus on specific patient complaints, gestational age, and if the patient is hemodynamically stable or unstable. Depending on the severity of the patient’s complaint (which is commonly vaginal bleeding in the setting of a subchorionic hemorrhage), treatment should be rapidly initiated.[15] Those patients who present with vaginal bleeding and are RhD negative should be given anti-D immune globulin for protection against alloimmunization in subsequent pregnancies.[16] Treatments should be tailored to the patient, the type and severity of their symptoms, as well as the size and location of the subchorionic hematoma.[17]
Some sources suggest vaginal progesterone supplementation for patients with vaginal bleeding in the first trimester; however, this has not been shown to increase live birth rates, and its routine use is not recommended.[18] Researchers have noted fewer spontaneous abortions and a higher rate of term pregnancy in patients undergoing bed rest; however, these studies have not been significant enough to change current recommendations and guidelines.[2] In a mother that is stable with a stable fetus, with no evidence of a large volume of blood loss, conservative management with follow-up ultrasound evaluation is adequate.[19]
The study goes on to note a higher risk of “spontaneous abortion” — which is a natural miscarriage. But nowhere does the study note anything about utilizing induced abortion as a treatment.
Playing “hot potato” with hemorrhaging patients?
Yet Lyons also claimed, “My colleagues were so scared and confused to even mention the word [abortion], it’s like a hot potato — pass the patient around and hopefully something will happen and declare itself,” she claimed.
Question: Why would Lyons’ colleagues even need to mention induced abortion when induced abortion is not the typical standard of care or treatment for subchorionic hemorrhage? Has induced abortion come to be commonly seen as a first-line standard of care for essentially any pregnancy complication these days? It’s all very odd, to say the least.
Lyons continued, “I was working with some amazing nurses and we decided as a team that we were going to break our hospital’s rules and admit her, even though she wasn’t 20 weeks pregnant because I just couldn’t send her home again and hope for the best.” She added, “[A] few hours later she aborted her fetus, and she hemorrhaged and required a blood transfusion…”
Another question: Why would admitting a woman with a subchorionic hemorrhage who repeatedly returned to the emergency room be against hospital policy, regardless of gestational age? This was not explained, and it makes no sense. Why would anyone repeatedly continue to send a patient home with an already diagnosed subchorionic hemorrhage that was worsening?
So we’re given no explanation as to why “hospital policy” wouldn’t allow a hemorrhaging woman to be admitted until 20 weeks, and we’re given no explanation as to why “induced abortion” would be the main ‘treatment’ (which isn’t the standard of care) considered to the point of passing a heavily hemorrhaging patient around “like a hot potato” — which sounds pretty careless (even negligent), to be honest. And this leads to even further questions because it appears from online listings that Lyons practices at both St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center and St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center. St. Luke’s Boise was the very same hospital that flew a pregnant woman at 20 weeks to Utah so a hospital in another state could abort her baby by D&E — without telling her, and without this being the standard of care. Nicole Miller awoke in Utah to learn her son Maddox had been dismembered without her knowledge. Live Action News reported this story earlier this year (emphases added):
According to media reports, Miller awoke to heavy bleeding during her 20th week of pregnancy. By that afternoon, wrote the NYT, “she was still leaking amniotic fluid and hemorrhaging and, now in a panic, struggling to understand why the doctor was telling her that she needed to leave the state to be treated.”
“If I need saving, you’re not going to help me?” she asked the doctor concerning the possibility that her health could be affected. (emphasis added) “He told me he wasn’t willing to risk his 20-year career.”…
Miller had begun leaking amniotic fluid and spotting three weeks prior, at 17 weeks, but “[b]efore Ms. Miller could see the specialist, she woke up hemorrhaging” wrote the Times. It’s unclear if the delay in care over those three weeks was Miller’s choice or the fault of the maternity care deserts that have existed in Idaho since before Roe was overturned.
Either way, Miller was now suffering a serious placental abruption and experiencing a preterm premature rupture of membranes [PPROM] — her water had broken. And no one seemed to know how to provide the appropriate standard of care.
Miller was transferred from the ER at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center in Idaho to the hospital’s labor and delivery triage unit, where doctors apparently informed her that Maddox was in danger, but said they could not legally give her the care she needed — preterm delivery.
The Times explained (emphasis added), “[N]o one mentioned abortion, or termination…”
Instead, the labor and delivery unit at St. Luke’s “put Ms. Miller on a small plane to Utah.”
Then, the NYT shockingly states, “Only when she woke up the next morning did she understand, because a nurse told her, that she was airlifted so she could have an abortion” (emphasis added).
Miller awoke to learn she had undergone — it seems without her knowledge — a D&E dismemberment abortion, during which a doctor pulled Maddox out of her body in pieces.
Maddox was intentionally and directly killed when a preterm induced delivery or an emergency C-section was the standard of care. …
The New York Times noted about Miller’s story:
Ms. Miller said that doctors told her that the fetus still had a heartbeat, and that she would need to leave Idaho for care. They transferred her first to a labor and delivery triage unit, where doctors said the fetus was in danger…
Still, no one mentioned abortion, or termination, she said. “It was, ‘We need to get you to a place where you have all of your options.’”
Of course, none of this makes sense; why would doctors be concerned about Miller’s baby being “in danger” if the only “care” that could be provided was intentionally killing that child, who “still had a heartbeat,” in another state? Then they flew her to another state and she woke up to learn that this same “baby in danger” who “had a heartbeat” had been intentionally dismembered instead of delivered intact, whether he had a chance of survival or not (21 weeks is the earliest so far that a preemie has survived). AG Raúl Labrador noted his doubts about the honesty of St. Luke’s which claimed half a dozen other women had to be flown out of state to have their babies intentionally killed, too.
So, is it possible that this hospital where doctors played “hot potato” with a hemorrhaging 20-week patient is the same hospital that played “hot potato” with this hemorrhaging patient at 14 weeks — when in both cases, they were legally able to provide the standard of care, which would have been medically necessary preterm delivery?
If a patient is experiencing hemorrhaging so severe as to cause anemia, regardless of gestational age, it seems reasonable to admit that patient; at 14 weeks, if labor could not be stopped or she had developed an infection, preterm delivery would have become necessary, regardless. Though her baby would have been too young to survive, preterm delivery in a situation such as this is not an induced abortion; it is not the intentional killing of the child. And it indeed sounds like admitting this patient to the hospital even sooner was within the proper standard of care — and thankfully, she was finally admitted, needing a blood transfusion.
Is playing “hot potato” with patients, or refusing to provide them with the standard of care (regardless of alleged “fear” or “confusion”) tantamount to medical negligence?
What does Idaho’s law say?
Induced abortion is defined by Idaho as “the use of any means to intentionally terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman with knowledge that the termination by those means will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the unborn child…” The law also repeatedly references the “good faith medical judgment” to be used by the physician.
There would be no reason for doctors to be “scared” or “confused” about this. Idaho’s law allows for a doctor to perform an induced abortion if he deems in his “good faith medical judgment” that it is truly medically necessary to prevent the woman’s death. Lyons reported that this patient 1) miscarried her child upon hospital admission and 2) hemorrhaged to the point where she needed a blood transfusion. Mayo Clinic states that a blood transfusion is a “potentially life-saving procedure [that] can help replace blood lost due to surgery or injury.” Surely, even if the woman had not miscarried on her own, if she had lost so much blood as to become severely anemic and to need a blood transfusion, the situation might reasonably be considered life-threatening in a physician’s “good faith medical judgment.”
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act says, “Medical treatment provided to a pregnant woman by a health care professional as defined in this chapter that results in the accidental death of, or unintentional injury to, the unborn child shall not be a violation of this section.” This is important because if preterm delivery had needed to happen by induction to prevent the woman from losing even more blood, this would have been done with the intent to save the woman’s life, not with the intent to kill the child; therefore, the death would have been unintentional, yet known to be likely. Also (emphases added):
The following shall not be considered criminal abortions for purposes of subsection (1) of this section:
(a) The abortion was performed or attempted by a physician as defined in this chapter and:
(i) The physician determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. No abortion shall be deemed necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman because the physician believes that the woman may or will take action to harm herself; and
The physician performed or attempted to perform the abortion in the manner that, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, provided the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive, unless, in his good faith medical judgment, termination of the pregnancy in that manner would have posed a greater risk of the death of the pregnant woman.
Even though it sounds as though the woman mentioned by Lyons did not need or have an induced abortion — Lyons said the woman ‘aborted her fetus’ as though she had naturally miscarried — the law would have allowed an induced abortion to save her life if the “physician determined, in his good faith medical judgment and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
Why were doctors allegedly ‘scared and confused?’
So why would doctors be “scared and confused” as Lyons is claiming? OB/GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop offers a reason for such a claim.
“Doctors are not attorneys,” she recently stated in a Facebook video. “We have always relied on our professional medical associations to explain new laws that impact the practice of medicine, and this happens commonly. The Affordable Care Act, the HIPAA privacy regulations, even the opioid prescribing changes… do have also significant punishments involved. So this is not the first time that doctors have seen a significant concern from the law that they need to obey the law.”
She added, “Every time what has happened is our medical organizations have explained the law to us. In fact, nearly every year, I am required to take mandatory CME [continuing medical education] to make sure I still remember how to prescribe opioids. So this is how it works in medicine.”
However, in the case of pro-life laws, “it did not work this way.” She noted, “None of the medical organizations voluntarily helped the doctors understand the law, and in fact, sometimes they were stirring up the confusion and fear themselves… and then when doctors did become confused and provide sub-quality care… then that’s being pointed at as demonstration that the laws are confusing.”
Of course, one would expect a physician practicing in any state to be knowledgeable about that state’s laws, and how they allow physicians “good faith medical judgment” to utilize the standard of care to treat patients.
The media has been overflowing with stories of doctors allegedly being unable to care for pregnant women in pro-life states, but each of those claims has been debunked. This latest story may be yet another attempt to exploit a tragic story to promote abortion on demand through fear-mongering. It’s entirely possible; after all, Vox just admitted that pro-abortion groups seem to be hoping more women die so they can dishonestly blame pro-life laws for their deaths, to their own political advantage.
Call on President Trump to pardon the FACE Act prisoners on his first day in office.
